Need to Empty the Trash a few times?

Software
1

I have used a few mac computers that have the same issues. Currently I’m using a MacBook Pro M1 with Monterey with external drives attached.

  • I had a lot of stuff in the trash
  • I empty the trash
  • then I open the trash and I see more stuff inside
  • then I empty the trash a second time
  • now the trash is empty

This has happened on a few Mac computers. Has anyone else experienced this?

2

I use the Finder setting “Remove items from Trash after 30 days”. Now there is never many items in the trash and I never have to manually empty it.

3

Were the items that didn’t get deleted on external drives?

4

Very possibly - but hard to tell. Might this make a difference?

5

Sure. I prefer to do this manually.

6

I was wondering if there might be a file on a drive that hasn’t spun up. I would think that the computer would wait for the drive to spin up to empty the trash, but sometimes they do screwy things.

1 Like
7

That’s an interesting thought. Or maybe the spinning drive went to sleep while waiting for other stuff to empty (there was a lot of stuff to delete)